


Follow The Smoke

by Splintered_Star



Series: a revolution for the sake of one man [5]
Category: Les Misérables (Dallas 2014), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: (attempted), Bad End AU, Execution, Gen, Inprisonment, M/M, Minor Character Death, POV Original Character, Suicide, anxiety attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 06:40:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6645493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Splintered_Star/pseuds/Splintered_Star
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Referendum failed. </p><p>A Bad End AU, based off of chapter seven of <i>Lessons Exquisitely Crafted. </i> Will make no sense out of that context.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Follow The Smoke

**Author's Note:**

> See end note for who dies. 
> 
> Title taken from Alice Cooper's Pick Up The Bones, mostly because I was listening to it a lot at the time. 
> 
> Also, Phillipe is a Precious Cinnamon Roll who deserves /none/ of this.

The referendum failed.

The leaders received the news in M. Jean's house, as quiet as a funeral. M. Javert was out, saying he was "arranging" things. He'd had an instinct, he said, and they all knew what that meant.

Phillipe sat on the couch, looking down so that he wouldn't have to watch everyone's faces as they understood, as they slowly realized what he'd done. He'd made a wager on the people, and he'd lost.

"....so, the firing squad, then." Mathieu snorted, and then burst into a frantic, hysterical laughter that Phillipe hadn't heard since his mother died. Mathieu buried his head in crossed arms, his shoulders shaking.

"I-" Phillipe swallowed. Everything had gone wrong, everything he'd believed in, "I'm so sorry everyone, I-"

A hand on his shoulder, rough and calloused and gentle. Phillipe looked up at M. Jean, the saint who deserved better than this, who smiled at him even though he'd failed everyone.

"You did everything you could." M. Jean looked around, looking decades older in the span of ten minutes. "You all did." He took a breath, looking at his daughter, and let it out again. His free hand counted off a decade on an imaginary rosary. "Now we must have faith."

Mathieu snorted again, Azelma tucked against his side. Next to them, Marius stared at the holo blankly and Cosette looked ahead with clear eyes.

"Yes," Cosette said, shaking but stable. "We will have faith."

 

 

Javert snarled and fought and argued, until Valjean took his wrist and the man stilled like a puppet with cut strings and was taken into custody without further complaint. He made a motion for his gun, but Valjean's hand tightened, and Javert turned it over to the officers without a word. Everyone knew that Javert wasn't thinking of using it for defense.

Javert had spent the week before calling in favors, setting up escape routes, trying to arrange a safe way out of the country even though he knew damn well none of these damned idiots would take them.

The officers shuffled awkwardly. They'd all admired Javert, gone through school hearing stories of his bravery and honesty and dedication. At least one of them had "what would Valjean Do" tattooed on their shoulder, but right now, that question seemed harder to answer.

Javert’s patron took one look at them, set his shoulders, and walked into custody and sat down next to Javert. Javert stared at him, but his patron only smiled.

"If the charge is treason, then it's important to take every guilty party into custody, is it not? Thoroughness is vital."

The guards around them shuffled and muttered awkwardly amongst themselves while the secretary of the police smoked and offered Javert a cigarette.

 

Phillipe sat in his cell, sat in the oppressive silence and tried to focus on his breathing.

He’d turned himself in, of course, just like the rest of them had – he’d lost the gamble, he would not run from his fate. The guards had wanted to put him in a different cell block from the others, but he’d insisted – he was to be killed like any other traitor, so he would be imprisoned like one. He was no different from them.

It was too quiet, too familiar – his breathing slowed, became shallow, instinctually trying to be silent rather than breathe and break the sacred stillness – noise just made the black hole of quiet much more obvious, he’d learned that as a child –

Mathieu had been gagged for arguing with the guards. Marius had been silenced after a few threats. Phillipe would rather suffer than have them be punished. He’d endured years of silence, he could last one more night, they were already going to die for his sake -

A few cells over, suddenly, there was – noise, speech. Not loud enough to be directed at anyone, but distinctive nonetheless – Valjean. Quiet, rhythmic, a recitation made smooth with the ease of long practice.

A prayer.

It wove through the cells, not stifled by the guards or stamped out by the black hole of silence – a candle that lessened, rather than emphasized, the darkness trying to swamp it. Phillipe did not recognize the words – his faith withered years ago – but he breathed in time to them regardless, in on one line and out on the next. It was a balm, a comfort that Phillipe did not deserve, but Valjean offered regardless.

In the quiet darkness and waiting to die, Phillipe wept as he always had – silent, still, not for himself but for his comrades.

 

 

"You know, he probably won't do it, not to you," Mathieu muttered, frantic, continuing the same argument they'd been having the entire trip. "You know he was going to delay it for Cosette's pregnancy, and Azelma's being sent to Rochefort, and the Arch Bishop interceded for Valjean-"

"Mathieu," Phillipe said, quietly. They were on their way to the arena where they would be shot. No electric chair, not for this. This needed to be a production, a display. He was not afraid, or angry, or even sad. He felt as though everything had been drained out of him, leaving him nothing but a lattice of crystal clear purpose. "We've talked about this. I will not let you do this alone. Either together or not at all."

Next to him in the armored car, Mathieu let out a breath, his eyes squeezed shut. Across from them, Marius quirked a bittersweet smile, muttering names under his breath. They didn't ask who he was thinking of. They already knew.

The armored car slowed to a stop and Phillipe felt the crystal lattice inside of him shimmer. He and Mathieu were going to be the first executed, for betraying their blood as well as their state. (Together, side by side.) Marius would go next. Valjean, Javert and the secretary of the police were in the next car.

The back door of the van opened. A guard - young, hesitance in his manner even through the armor - gestured for them to leave. Phillipe smiled at him, and then looked back to Mathieu.

 

 

The charges were read by a machine as they were lead into an arena. There were shouts, echoes of protests from beyond the wall. This was being spun as our great Napoleon willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for his country, that the safety of his people were foremost in his mind over his own family. But no one believed it.  The police couldn't be trusted to stop the protestors, and so the National Guard was holding the line instead.

Phillipe did not look. He hardly listened to the charges read. His eyes remained on his father, on a balcony above the arena. He couldn't make out his father's expression through the security glass and distance, but he knew those tight shoulders.

He and Mathieu were tied to posts next to each other. It felt right, like seeing M. Jean for the first time, like climbing the castle gates, like standing next to Mathieu at his wedding. If this was how it was going to be, then this was how it would be. Phillipe watched his father through the distance, until his father turned away.

Cameras flashed. There was a dull roar of reporters and protestors, but it was distant, removed from the sound of his own breath and the creaking of the restraints behind him. Phillipe let out a breath, feeling the crystal lattice shudder, and looked over to his brother. Mathieu looked to be somewhere between rage and despair, somewhere between hurling abuse at his uncle and weeping.

Phillipe was still empty. He wept earlier in his cell, for everyone who had suffered and fought for him, for everything they'd believed in for him, for the moment the fight went out of Mathieu's eyes. He would not weep for himself.

The officer at the head of the firing squad visibly swallowed, hesitating as he ordered the shooters into position. Phillipe breathed deeply and nodded to Mathieu. A flicker of actual emotion grew through the lattice of crystal in his throat - Marius had said that some of his friends, at the barricades, had died hand-in-hand. But Phillipe's hands were tied and Mathieu was out of reach. No matter. Mathieu understood.

The officer looked at some point between the two of them, unwilling to meet either of their eyes. Phillipe felt sorry for him, distantly. Executions must be difficult for everyone involved, he thought. A pity they didn’t get the chance to change that.

"Do you have any last words?"

Mathieu and Phillipe looked at each other, and then at the officer. They both shook their heads. Phillipe inclined his at the officer.

"Please, Monsieur, do as you must."

Phillipe closed his eyes, and waited for the end.

There was a shout, and a thump -

 

\- Phillipe opened his eyes. He was not dying - his eyes shot over to Mathieu first, but he was unharmed as well - so what had -

A soldier stood at attention, shaking but stable, his gun laying, unfired, on the ground. He turned to the officer and saluted.

"I am very sorry sir, but I am unable to complete this order!" The soldier turned, pulled his helmet off, set it next to his abandoned gun, and walked across the dead silence of the arena to take a place immediately to the right of Phillipe.

Phillipe swallowed - now, now the crystal lattice was shattering, now he felt something, now he felt entirely too much -

"No, please monsieur, you don't have to do this for me, you," he pleaded, "Please, protect yourself, I,"

"Monsieur," the guard said, his eyes - green, steady, crystal clear - locked on the firing line, "I have made my choice."

Next to him, Mathieu made a noise that was either laughter or sobbing. Phillipe heaved in a breath, and then another, and nodded. Why, he wondered, why now, why here, when he had no riches or even the hope of a new future to offer? What could he offer in return for this ultimate sacrifice, meaningless but for the two of them? "...thank you, monsieur."

The guard nodded. Above them, Louis-Jerome watched, but Phillipe could not meet his eyes, too struck by the vision of the other marksmen across from them staring back and the officer talking frantically into his ear piece, asking for instructions.

Then, one of the other marksmen stared for a long moment, and flung down his rifle with a noise of frustration. His helmet crashed down next to it. He turned long enough to glare at the observation deck in challenge, and stomped across the arena to take a place to Mathieu's left. Then, another marksman joined him, and then another. Soon, the entire firing line stood in line with them, facing their officer and their leader.

Phillipe swallowed down broken crystal, swallowed down the doomed faith of these men, walking into death next to him for no reason but that they did not want him to walk alone - he swallowed down a sob, and looked up at the observation deck.

Louis-Jerome stared down at him, at him and at Mathieu and the line of guards on either side of them, and Phillipe still could not read his expression.

Their leader, Our Second Napoleon, his /father/, nodded, once and deeply, almost a bow. Then he pulled out his side arm, ever-present since the war, and put it to his own throat.

It was too far away to hear the shot. Phillipe wouldn't be able to hear anything over his own breath anyway.

His father's body slumped down out of sight. Blood splattered on the wall behind him. Phillipe's vision blurred - now he wept, sobbing on the ground, without feeling the ache in his arms or in his knees.

Shouting, clambering, people trying to figure out what to do now - Phillipe didn't hear, didn't look, unable to look away from the splatter of blood that was all he could see of his father. He distantly noticed the cuffs popping off of his wrists, but what did it matter, he’d made peace with his own death but not –

Arms, warm, grounding. Mathieu. Mathieu had his arms around him, whispering for him to breathe, breath, please Phillipe breathe, please. Phillipe drew in a breath, and then another, and another.

**Author's Note:**

> Yep, Louis-Jerome commits suicide.


End file.
